Need jafos advice on Processors..

Need jafos advice on Processors..

Alas my durable 3570K is fine but the motherboard is starting to have issues. I had posted previously that I wanted to move over to Haswell and get a 6850K. However after doing a bit of research and also looking at the looming 7700K's about to hit I came to the conclusion that really for gaming and home use the 6700K (4cores, 8 threads).

So, for a good build. ...6700K vrs 6850K vrs 7700K?

I was looking at the Samsung 960 EVO M.2 for my Windows install and games.

Now...not to sound like a Stardock fanboy (which I happily admit to) but this rig is really for maxing out Gal Civ III and other 64bit 4x games (Civ VI).

I also play Star Wars the old republic, and hook up my 60" 1080HD tv to watch movies sometimes or cast it via google-cast. I play A LOT of games but the majority of my time is Gal Civ III, Civ VI, and Xcom II. Ok Ok.. I also love Pillars of Eternity and most rpg's. ....

Budget is 1200 to 1600. I was reading an article that suggested the 7700K processors are not much (3.2%) faster than 6700 AND ran hotter. I will wait as you suggest. The build was going to go around January but I can wait.

Basing my answer off of current tech so it's not going to be 100% accurate until official benchmarks from sites not owned by someone at AMD come out I'd suggest the following.

Go with the Asus Maximus VIII Hero "I have the VI Hero running an i7-4790k"

Note: If there's a motherboard that can encapsulate & cool the M.2 2280 SSD below you'll likely want that one instead

Unless you're going to do some heavy Virtual Machine work or A/V encoding work, save the cash & drop from an i7 to an i5 if you run into the budget wall -- This will save you around $100-$140 if prices are similar to the 6000 line

A Closed loop cooling unit for your CPU. My Corsair H90 is working like a charm - However I did put 2 high airflow quiet fans on it "Corsair 140mm if I remember right" -- This will be roughly 100-160 depending on the unit & fans you get which depend on the space avail in your case

If your copy of Windows is an OEM version you may need to replace it -- 7/8.1/10 Go with the Pro version for the higher amount of ram support.

Balance the costs of these 3 below with the remainder of your budget

Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4 - Buy in Pairs, as fast as the board supports, suggesting no less than 16GB max of 64GB on the new boards I believe

Samsung 960 Pro "Ranges from 256GB to 2TB"

High airflow low noise adjustable RPM fans for your case

Honestly if you have enough after the above and desire VR experience, look at picking up a GTX 1070

Other odds & ends for the build

Arctic Silver V if you don't have a tube laying around.

Custom cable kit for SATA3 Cables

Custom Cable kit for power if your power supply is modular

Power bar to move the Video card power cords from the top of the card to the bottom by the end to reduce cable clutter

If you look for the 'top-of-the-line' components in each and every facet of a build you'll blow that budget sky-high.

At the time of my last build I effectively bought the best of everything available at that time and the bottom line is [now] over $9000 AUD [about 8 USD].

Prior to this build I'd stayed with the 'common sense' rule that bang-for-your-buck comes in at what would be the "next best", or one step down from 'the best available'.

Then, 1 step down would probably have been about 2K. Good example....price difference between a 980 and a 970.

One of the realities of Computer builds is that IF you wait for the next/faster/better hardware release you will NEVER end up with a new computer.

The rest of the 'choosing' is research-research-research....

....and no matter how good you do it you need to expect 'shit happens' such as my $1300 case was compatible with ATX boards but not all ATX boards are the same. Some locate their CPU socket further to the right which also means the CPU cooler won't be exactly where you'd expect it....and in my case I had to cut and shave some cooling fins from my cooler to enable the case to open-close. [it's a unique design].

Others' advice is good...but often it is blinded by prejudice [particularly with branding] ...

Others' advice is good...but often it is blinded by prejudice [particularly with branding] ...

Can't argue with that I know I'm guilty of it myself since I used to build computers at a small ISP to sell to customers. -- So I do try to keep at least a few different manufacturers in mind instead of hardlining with one.

Hmm actually fun ? to those who know off hand. How well does Civ VI handle multi threading for big games/maps?

Unless you're going to do some heavy Virtual Machine work or A/V encoding work, save the cash & drop from an i7 to an i5 if you run into the budget wall -- This will save you around $100-$140 if prices are similar to the 6000 line

This is not the case anymore, as the 6700K is 500Mhz faster than the 6600K even without the other advantages.. The i5's have a smaller amount of memory to work with as well, they're essentially hamstrung in large work loads. It's true that in typical day to day operations of the average gamer, your 100Mhz slower i5 is only a few percent slower than the i7 you could have bought, but as soon as you do any heavy lifting, like video encoding, or compiling, that extra 2MB of ram can make a substantial difference. Alas, they're not 100Mhz apart, so that i7 is going to be 15% faster on the level simply because it's 15% faster. They also lack hyper-threading, which will be increasingly powerful for gaming going forward, as the switch to multi-threaded, 64-bit gaming is well under way. Ashes is simply the first of a great many to come that will benefit substantially from the capability.

When I bought my 2500K instead of a 2600K, this was gold standard advice. I actually got better performance in some games because of poor support for hyper-threading outweighing the performance loss from being 100Mhz slower.

IMO if you want to keep the computer for say next 5 years, as opposed to just 2 and then upgrade again, get x99 and sixcore CPU instead of 6700k/7700k... even if for gaming. Latest AAA games like obviously Ashes, but BF1 and few others too, actually gain from having more cores, i mean more than 4, already. And its probably trend for the future.

For that budget (1200 to 1600), i would get in your place cheap X99 mobo (personally have GB x99p SLI, which has M2 slot), i7 6800k (cause its 200 cheaper than 6850k and the only reason to go 6850k are multiple GPUs, which is not your case), 32GB RAM, as its fairly cheap, the SSD you mentioned (but i would go just smaller size like 256GB for Windows and essential apps and get another bigger and cheaper SATA one for games, instead of single big and expensive M2 Nvme)...and if you are left with some money, add GTX 1070... i think all of that should fit into that budget with some decent CPU cooling on top of it, for some mild CPU OC (4GHz).

Maybe you want to wait for AMD Zen CPUs though, should be officially unveiled on 13th December. They may provide better bang for money than any Intel offering. I would not hold my breath though, if they are competitive, they wont be cheap either.

It all depends on what you're playing, the current trend makes the power of your processor less relevant, not more so. A hyper-threaded quad is already more horsepower than you should ever need for a video game in the next several years. If you've stopped playing anything like Sins, sure, it's not really a concern. If you're still burning a few hours a week on it and you'd really like to play a huge game without it being a slideshow, you want as much horsepower as you can get, and 15% faster is quite a bit faster. Expectations of a Sins 2 down the road that may or may not appear and would likely be at least a year or two out even if it's in the works now won't really help with his immediate upgrade. If single core performance is going to be a big issue for him, he needs to know this stuff. Those huge map games turn into an absolute slideshow on my 2500K, even when I overclocked it to 4.2Ghz. That's faster than a stock 6800K. The computer that can run Sins in all it's overloaded glory just doesn't exist.

It all depends on what you're playing, the current trend makes the power of your processor less relevant, not more so. A hyper-threaded quad is already more horsepower than you should ever need for a video game in the next several years. If you've stopped playing anything like Sins, sure, it's not really a concern. If you're still burning a few hours a week on it and you'd really like to play a huge game without it being a slideshow, you want as much horsepower as you can get, and 15% faster is quite a bit faster. Expectations of a Sins 2 down the road that may or may not appear and would likely be at least a year or two out even if it's in the works now won't really help with his immediate upgrade. If single core performance is going to be a big issue for him, he needs to know this stuff. Those huge map games turn into an absolute slideshow on my 2500K, even when I overclocked it to 4.2Ghz. That's faster than a stock 6800K. The computer that can run Sins in all it's overloaded glory just doesn't exist.

I dont have any exact benchmarks at my hand, but i highy doubt that 2500k, even at 4,2GHz, is faster than stock 6800k. Naturally 6800k runs only at 3,5GHz, maybe 3,6GHz when turboing just one or 2 cores, but there is certain performance advantage on its part compared to oldish Sandy Bridge 2500k CPU. I think there was an article on Anandtech or Tomshardware comparing the different Intel architectures over the past few years and IIRC there is at least 10 percent performance improvement on the same clocks between Sandy Bridge and Broadwell CPUs.

And even if it was still faster, the difference should IMO be negligible.

Not to mention that OCing 6800k to 4,2GHz is a thing of changing 2 or 3 values within BIOS. I run my 6850k at that exact clocks too and ocing it was literally trivial - if i could do it, anyone can.

Anyway, i agree with the last part, there is no computer which could run Sins without getting choppy at later stages of the game. If it would be choppy with 6800k (as it would), those additional 15 percent gained by higher clocks of 6700k/7700k wont make a difference, its going to be still choppy. However, additional 2 cores of 6800k can make a significant difference with new games. Hence my advice.